Farming is supposed to have started in the Middle East around
10 kya. But Papua New Guinea was first populated about 40 kya.
Its long-established societies (with about 1,000 of the world's
5000 languages) have apparently each maintained their way of
life, which includes farming, since their first colonisation.

What gives?

Or to put it another way: On page 374 of the Cambridge Encyc-
lopedia of Human Evolution Prof Frank Hole of Yale states:
". . in a few places in each of the major landmasses, between
12 kya and 9 kya, people began to cultivate suitable species
of cereal grains and root crops. Southwest Asia, equatorial
Africa, the South-East Asian mainland, Central America, and
lowland and highland South America were all scenes of early
agriculture."